My Mom uses an electric skillet when her stove is out of commission. (She and Dad live in a motor home with a propane stove. They have to move the RV to fill the tank.) They're not that expensive.

During our remodel, I've been using a crock pot and our outdoor grill a lot. I also learned how to make microwave pasta.

Here's a link to The Temporary Kitchen on the FAQ of the Finished Kitchens Blog.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Temporary Kitchen

My outdoor gas grill was a life saver!

Lots of frozen Trader Joe's meals

Waaaaaaaay too much fast food. DS climbs in my closet now and passes out "chicken nugget" clotheshangers. :( And the lady at Wendy's knows me.

Waaay too much eating out (Find a place that's good, reasonably priced, and has enough leftovers for a meal or two later in the week. Here, that's Chinese, Japanese, or Middle Eastern.)

Lots of cereal and microwave oatmeal.

I thought we'd do a couple of crockpot and electric skillet meals a week, but those dishes are so difficult to wash in the bathroom sink that I avoid cooking with them.

Winter was rough in Michigan this year. I didn't use the grill at all. Maybe if we'd remodeled in the summer...

great ideas!

We've been doing picnics as much as possible at neighborhood park. This is a two fold benefit-- no dishes AND gets up out of the ducty house!

Lots of hummus, baba ganoush, tabouli-- I'm probably misspelling these, but basically tasty middle eastern dips.

It's so weird that I dread simply cutting cheese up-- now I realize that fatty things stick to cutlery so much more than fruits, etc. With a decent sink and a dishwasher, i just never before appreciated this! Washing dishes in bathroom sink is such a pain and just seems so . . . wrong! oh well! Glad I'm not alone-- not looking forward to getting our credit card bill from all the restauant meals we've had since construction started!

We had fresh salmon, crab, steak, chicken...sheesh just about what we normally eat. With the big green egg, we could cook anything, and with the camp stove we could sautee asparagus, steam brocolli, etc. We joked that we could live that way forever (with the cook stove in the garage and a lovely chandelier above our dining table). If the plumbers hadn't removed the last bathroom by mistake...geeze I might still be in there LOL

{{!gwi}}

{{!gwi}}

Great ideas so far.

*pbrisjar, can you tell me more about microwave pasta please?*

Louisa, I know what you mean about sticky cutlery. I've been getting through wads of kitchen paper to pre-clean cutlery before washing it up. I'm also using disposable cutlery for some things too. This is not an ecofriendly household right now - more than usual disposable usage going on.

cate1337 - thank goodness for Trader Joes!! There's a new one 3 minutes from my house and that sure came in useful for their bathroom facilities too last week when the water got cut off (we are also doing bath remodel too).

We picked up a single "burner" induction cooktop to supplement our microwave and electric skillet, and between them have managed to cook up a variety of good meals for the past several weeks. I'm sure we'll burn out and start eating out more before it's all done, but for now, here are some ideas:

- we double and triple up on quantities, to make the cleanup effort more worthwhile. Cleaning up after cooking chili is a pain, but when we end up with three extra ziplock meals in the freezer, it's not so bad. Also, cooking a couple meals worth of rice or other starch at a time seems to work pretty well, and it's easy to zap that as a last step once the rest of the meal is ready.

- go for single pot medleys rather than multiple courses. Chili, stew, stir-fry, soup have all worked so far.

- allow extra time for staging if you're doing multiple courses. In our case, we can't run all the devices at the same time without tripping the breaker, so working out the sequencing for meal is not unlike figuring out the order of the remodel!

- both eat out at lunch and bring home leftovers to swap for dinner. (Hasn't exactly worked yet, but seems like a good idea.)

- we'd picked up a steamer for the microwave a while back, and it's allowed us to keep eating fresh veggies during the disruption.

Nancy put some pictures and descriptions of our temp kitchen on her blog, linked below. I'm sure we'll keep trying different things; we like to cook and eat, which is what's behind the whole effort to begin with. And the new kitchen will feel so easy when we finally can use it!

-Alan

Here is a link that might be useful: Our temp kitchen

That's a great chandy! How in the world did they remove a bathroom by "mistake"???

Here's how I do it:
Take a large microwave-safe lidded dish and put in some water (maybe about 1/3-less than 1/2 full) and salt and / or spices if you want. Place in microwave and cook until hot (about 5 minutes for the size I cook). Take out of microwave and add pasta until the water just covers it. DO NOT overfill your container. Leave room for the bubbling/boiling action. Cook for about 18 minutes. The water should become completely absorbed by the pasta. If it's not quite cooked enough, you can add a little more water and cook for about 4-5 minutes more.

Believe it or not, I prepared some casserole dishes ahead and froze them in aluminum foil trays (no clean-up & recylclable) just like I did when I was preparing to give birth and wanted easy-prep meals. I've been reheating them in the toaster oven or on plates in the MW.

Century model 4960 propane camp stove from REI. Get an adapter to feed it from a gas grill tank. IIRC, it cost about $60. If that's too much, there are much cheaper, similar Coleman propane stoves at WalMart.

Please use it outside--they warn that there is a potential CO hazard inside.

A portable induction burner is also a great idea.

When we camped in a tent trailer, I used an electric coffee pot to heat water for dishes. Wonder if one of those really big Party Perks would work for pasta? Also, an electric pressure cooker would come in really handy.

Our refrigerator died a week after we moved it out of the kitchen and into our dining room for the temporary kitchen. I spent the next day cooking all of the meat that was starting to defrost into meals that I could then refreeze (in our new refrigerator). Those meals were fantastic in our microwave only temporary kitchen, but they ran out after about a month. Now I am doing lots of Marie Callendar type frozen meals and using all paper & plastic plates and utensils because I still don't have running water in the kitchen yet. Be patient, it will be worth it (I hope!) Good luck!

Tried your pasta recipe Sunday Pbrisjar, and it worked great! We haven't had spaghetti at home for 3 months (no kitchen since 1/21). [I saw it in another thread.]

Thanks Pbrisjar!

Glad you liked it, buehl. Sometimes it's those little things that make a difference.

Now if only I could figure out how to saute garlic in a microwave...

Mostly we just ate very poorly. I set up a temp kitchen/FR in my guest room, with the old frig, MW, and an induction plate I bought for this. We ended up using mostly the MW. I used the induction *once*, for pasta. It was slow. But mostly in our setup it was too much trouble. We didn't have enough power, or space to set things up. We blew fuses with the MW and TV at same time.

So mostly we just at very poorly for two months.

A cheap electric skillet was very handy. You can cook a lot of things in it. I also remodeled in the summertime so I used the grill and we ate on the patio a lot.

Here's a crock pot recipe I love -- I usually double the recipe and freeze for lunches. Using Rotel will produce a more spicy soup; using regular tomatoes will be more tame. If you have a crock pot and a can opener, you're in business!

Chicken Tortilla Soup -- 15 minutes preparation, 8 hours cooking

In crockpot, place 2 boneless skinless chicken breast halves

Without draining anything, combine in another bowl:
2 (15oz.) cans black beans
1 (14.5 oz.) can tomato sauce
2 (15 oz.) cans Rotel or stewed tomatoes
1 (4 oz.) can chopped green chilies
1 cup salsa, your preference as to strength (I use medium)

Pour over chicken and cook on low 8 hours.

Fifteen minutes before serving, remove chicken, shred, and return to crockpot.

Stir in: 1 can Niblets corn

Heat 15 minutes, or just long enough to get corn and chicken hot.

Serve topped with crushed tortilla chips, shredded cheese, and a dollop of sour cream -- or any other toppings you like!

When we moved into this house, the kitchen wasn't fully operational, so we did what you're doing for 6 or so weeks . . . my favorite thing was washing dishes in the bathtub -- in a basin, of course, but still!

Alan - We have a Super Rica's too apparently a great one since people drive 2+ hours just to eat there. What part of the world are you located in?

hostagrams - That's very similar to my recipe and in fact we're eating it tonight (left overs).

Eco friendly is definately not a term that can be used by TKO's in the middle of their re-model. ;-)

I actually have on of my dishdrawers temporarily hooked up and sitting on a funky rolling rack, it's perfect ;-)

The microwave, an electric skillet, a crockpot, and the camping stove - the latter used outside. (Ours was an old white gas stove!) We also had a coffeemaker and coffee grinder. Plus - salads - sandwiches - yogurt and cottage cheese.

However - we determined that one could NOT run the microwave and the crockpot at the same time, as we'd trip a breaker. We could also not use the microwave and the electric skillet at the same time - same problem. I don't think we ever figured out whether we could use the coffeemaker and an electric appliance at the same time.

We were using our brand new family room for our temporary kitchen - we held off on putting the carpeting in until after the kitchen was done (for several reasons). The circuitry in the family room just wasn't put in to handle a refrigerator, microwave, and the high wattage needed to run electric appliances at the same time. Trips to the breaker box were infrequent but irritating.

BTW, if we had it to do again, we might have upgraded to a 200 amp box in the process of all this upgrade.

DonnaR/CA

Here is a link that might be useful: Our Kitchen Project

Our grill also has a separate burner on it, so I am hoping we will be able to still cook mostly what we cook now using the grill and the burner. Up to now, we have only used that burner a couple of times (seemed like a great feature at the time) but I think it will come in handy during the remodel. I am also hoping the neighbors will take pity on us and invite us over :-)

jenellecal: We're in Santa Barbara, California. Could there be more than one SuperRica? More than once, we've heard visiting performers on stage say, "We loving coming to Santa Barbara -- a number #16 and a horchata!"

The chicken tortilla soup sounds great. Definitely trying that some time soon.

-Alan

Well, I also cooked a few casseroles and quiches ahead of time. But last night, I went to Let's Dish and prepared 12 entrees (to serve 6 each) is about 1.5 hours. Most of it cooks in the microwave, on my ebay find of a double electric burner, or in a crock pot. I also have some great crock pot recipes. Of course, this is just Day 1 for us, so in a week or two, I expect to be quite weary.

I love gadgets! We eat just fine with...

-A Zo fuzzy logic rice cooker makes boxed potatoes, rice, stew and eggs (kind of like an omelet).
-Heat water in an electric kettle and Zo hot pot.
-An electric skillet will do just about anything except bake.(I have a large one & a little one)
-One induction burner is the cooktop I've used for the last year.
-Bread maker
-Cuisinart brick oven
-Crock pot
-Electric grill
-Microwave, of course
-Toaster
-Waffle iron (plates reverse to griddle)

I think that's it. I can't wait to have a real kitchen, but we have not started the rehab yet.

I've been banished from the kitchen proper while Hubby works on the floor so without even the few things I've been used to (sink, flat surface for prep, cooking bowls, etc.)

Tonight's dinner born of necessity (nothing to cook in and perishables to be consumed before our trip):
chicken sausages grilled
broccoli cooked in a foil packed on the grill
(would've added some garlic if I had a flat surface for cutting / chopping)
avocado with cajun seasoning

Yanno, I kind of like this mode of cooking. There's a lot less dishes and mess.

Well, you guys are doing quite a bit better than me! I think I need to find ways as you suggest to do actual cooking rather than just reheating to save my sanity. I like the sound of an electric skillet. I was in a supermarket the other day and noticed a demo guy(that would be demonstration, not demolition!) cooking up some salmon in an electric grill thing. He told me to come back in 10 mins when the salmon would be ready and I told him I was actually more interested in the cooking device!

Igloo, what is the 'big green egg?'

Thanks for the tips and recipes - I'm definitely going to try the pasta.

We are building now, but when we were remodeling our current home we had no kitchen for 6 months. Remodeling was a must as we had just remodeled and just finished our wood floors , we were at home improvement store getting floor grates when ds called shrieking saying the washer pipe had burst and it was flooding everything. Rushed home, everything downstairs wet with massive amounts of water. I was heartsick and devastated. We had been remodeling for about 4 months.
Ok, you think thats bad, I was going to hosp. in 2 days to have 11th child by c-section. I was distraught. Insurance adjusters came next day, with large indutsrial fans in tow, and started ripping everything out, floor, carpet, new wainscot, baseboard, appliances etc. Everyone had to live upstairs, which was 2 bathrooms, master bedroom, small family area.
Kitchen, the only usable downstairs room, was torn apart, our frig was on back patio. No stove, no nothing except sink and counters. Thats how I came home with new baby. I was just a little hormonal. I cooked in that kitchen for 6 months, May-Dec. Prepared just about anything you could think of with the counter top appliances.
Made Thanksgiving dinner with a large roaster (did you know you can make wonderful pies in those things), crockpot, micro, electric skillet and 2 burner portable cook type thing. I definitely couldn't feed my children fast food for that long & really had to maintain some sort of normalcy for them. Am not saying I would do it again, but boy I still appreciate my new kitchen and its been 3 years.

I used an electric farberware frying pan. I loved it. I even use it now. I made a lot of chicken cutlets. thin sliced pork chops...then I would add some broth and add brown rice or regular rice and simmer. If you want add some veggies at the end. I even make that now. Hardly any mess. If you put down an old towel under the pan first, clean up is a snap. (Yes, I know to watch it.) If you put some water in the pan after cooking cleanup is a cinch. Even in the bathroom sink. I cooked in my temp kitchen for a year. At the end, I admit I was one cranky lady.
Lynn

I used all the other stuff, the electric griddle, crockpot, etc. But my favorite is probably my quesadilla maker. You can put ANYTHING on a tortilla! We have the side burner on our gas grill, too and since we remodeled last summer, we ate outside a lot. Grilled chicken, salmon, steak, burgers, etc. and made couscous and rice on the side burner. Also, a fabulous steamer gadget from Tupperware for steaming veggies in the microwave really came in handy. I still use it almost every day. We took an old wall cabinet and hung it in the garage with the OTR microwave under it. We put one of the drawer base units below it with the old countertop still attached so we had a small prep area. Washing dishes was a huge pain though as we only had the pedestal sink in the powder room or a bathtub or small upstairs bathroom sink to use.

DH hooked up our dishwasher the day we moved in, ages before any cabs went in, so we were able to wash dishes easily throughout. We had a microwave and toaster oven for cooking and managed pretty well not to eat out or get takeout (which i'm certain we would have done lots of if we'd had to wash up by hand)

I did lots of stuffed mushrooms/stuffed zucchini (stuff with spinach/tomato/nuts or cheese) in the toaster oven (everything in foil "trays"). If i didn't want to "cook", then sometimes i bought frozen "appetizer" things (small filo/spinach triangles, spring rolls, baby quiches) and cooked in toaster oven.

I made pasta or potato or Uncle Ben's rice in the microwave. Often had pasta with a no-cook sauce (chopped tomato w baby spinach/feta/olives, or balsamic vinegar/olive oil mix w grated cheese). I steamed veggies in the microwave or had salad. Roasted veggies are also easy in a toaster oven and if you mix with tomato you have a pasta sauce.

Without the washing dishes problem (which would have meant a lot more takeout!) it was kind of a pleasant way of cooking - simple, fresh, not many choices to decide between. Now I stand in the kitchen with my 6-ring induction cooktop, convection oven and convection microwave and a fridge full of choices and I can't decide what to cook! Sometimes I get a bit nostalgic for the midnight toaster-oven dinners :)

I succumbed to buying a gas grill after hearing all your experiences above. Yay!!! It was the best thing ever to come home and turn it on, put on the steaks and have real food on our (paper) plates once again.

Acountryfarm: I don't know how you survived!
Mayland, I love how organized everything looks in your temp kitchen.

We use a microwave, electric roaster oven and a George Foreman and pretty well eat every thing we did before. The roaster bakes, Foreman broils, etc.